Church Polity

This week our church had a panel discussion featuring Dr. John Hammett, a theology professor at Southeastern. The panel fielded various questions on church polity, how a local church is organized. The model generally advocated by the panel is a church that is led by a plurality of elders, ruled by the congregation, and served by the deacons. This is the model that our church follows, and is perhaps most notably advocated by Mark Dever at Capital Hill Baptist in books like Deliberate Church.

Personally, I don't find sufficient information in the New Testament to say with certainty that one model is more biblical. There are so few applicable verses. So that's why the following was the money quote of the discussion: With the right people, any model will work; with the wrong people, no model will work.